Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

 Eighteen Sunday After Pentecost

Year C, RCL

September 29,2019

North Fork Ministries

Gospel:

Luke 16:19-31

Jesus said, "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, `Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' But Abraham said, `Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' He said, `Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house-- for I have five brothers-- that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, `They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, `No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, `If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

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If you recall, the parable we read last week about the dishonest manager was very complex and difficult to decipher. In contrast, the implications of this parable about a rich man who received good things in his life and ignored the needs of the poor, seems simple, perhaps deceptively so. The graphic detail of the story causes us cringe. Lazarus, lying at the rich man’s gate has his sores licked by the passing dogs. We witness the agony of the rich man, consumed by the flames that surrounded him. We hear his pitiful plea that word be sent to his brothers, warning them of their awful fate. The rich man is in such torment, that he pleads with Father Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his fingertip in water and cool his parched tongue. 

If you have listened carefully to the gospel lessons according to Luke for the past few Sundays, it’s hard not to conclude that, “Luke is pretty hard on the rich.” 

And it is true, Jesus’ expression of compassion for the poor, and his condemnation of the rich, is repeated throughout Luke and the other gospels as well.

And I’ll admit that the rich are a particularly easy target these days. 

We live in a time where disparity in wealth between the rich and the middle class has reached obscene levels. You’ve probably read how in the 1970’s the typical CEO made about 30 times the amount an average employee made. Now the average CEO, makes 100’s of times more than the average worker. That the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, has never been more true in America.

From Luke’s perspective, the essence of the problem with such disparity in wealth is the great chasm that is created, a chasm that separates humanity, a chasm described to the rich man in today’s gospel: “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” Wealth enables us to create boundaries, separates us from the poor, and limits our opportunity to experience the chance for salvation that an encounter with those in need bring with them.

If you have been unusually blessed financially you might feel like Luke has painted a bull’s eye on your chest. You can breathe a little easier this morning. There is plenty in this message for all of us to take home – rich and poor alike.

Luke tells us that this parable was given to “lovers of money”.  Being rich offers more than just material advantages. A very clear path to redemption is presented to the rich man, over and over again – give your wealth away. It’s more complicated for those of us who don’t count ourselves as rich.

Here is a hint of where we are going.   It’s not that money itself is such a bad thing. We all need it and much good can come from its proper use. The problem was, the rich man loved his money. Its what he worshiped. And it is what we worship that tells us about the state of our soul. 

I know you’ve heard this story: There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and says, "What the hell is water?"

We are swimming in a state of unconsciousness. Almost always we move though life completely unaware that we are connected, a part of, everything else in the universe. We imagine that we are at the center of existence, the single most important person on the planet. That misconception about the centrality of our being, is our default setting, we are hardwired to believe that what has most meaning in life is what we experience personally, and nothing else matters as much.

However, it is possible not to choose the default setting, to consciously decide what is meaningful in our lives. We determine what we are going to worship.

The brilliant writer, David Foster Wallace, put this thought succinctly in a famous commencement address, “… in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”

If you worship money and the stuff money buys, there will never be enough to satisfy you. If you worship the body and beauty, you will never be beautiful enough. As time and age takes its toll, you will find yourself feeling ugly. If you worship power, you will move through life fearful and insecure and ultimately will become powerless. Worship the intellect and you will wind up stupid.

Wallace goes on to say, “But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.”

We operate under the illusion that the mindless pursuit of what the world tells us is important, is all that there is. When in fact such a pursuit always leaves us wanting. 

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus takes place in the afterlife. But what Jesus is really talking about is life before death. True life that is accessible to us through simple awareness. Awareness of what is real, but so ubiquitous, so all encompassing, that we must, again and again, remind ourselves, like the fish swimming in the pond, that we are surrounded by water.

While alive the rich man is offered release from the prison of his possessions. He is already in hell and doesn’t know it.  He is being eaten alive by what he worships, but remains oblivious. He thinks he is rich, but he is living in the poverty of a self-absorbed existence. He has Abraham and the prophets – and we have every other sage from Jesus to the Dalai Lama to Archbishop Tutu offering a tried and true path to consciousness and still, we close our eyes. And even the testimony of those who have risen from the dead, fails to awaken us.

The unconsciousness of the rich man persists beyond the grave – he still regards Lazarus as a servant – someone who might fetch him a taste of water. But as the flowing waters of baptism will remind us in a few weeks, “ This is water”. The waters of baptism bring with them an awareness that we can choose not to remain at the default setting. We can choose new life, real freedom, a freedom that takes us beyond ourselves into an awareness of the divine waters that flow through us all.